Smrt Lernins

This week started with academics and ended with the flu, so we didn’t get much done this week.

The highlight of the week was Captain Science finishing Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents on Wednesday. We’re going to kill a little time w/ some other types of math, then get the next books on payday. If only we could buy them locally!

The lowlight was that we’re still butting heads over history writing. I need to find a way to get us back on track w/ that, but can’t really figure out how. We’ve pretty much wrapped up pre-Roman, Roman-era, and post-Roman Britain, so after we’re back from our field trip/vacation, we’re starting w/ the Vikings, I think. Need to plot my lesson plan out a little more carefully and try to find ways of making writing more enticing.

Captain Science got 100% on his next review quiz of Caesar’s English. No writing or poetry this week, because of the flu.

Co-op was canceled on account of snow. Seriously! Snow! That’s twice this year (for the snow, not the co-op cancelation).

There really isn’t all that much else to report. We’re off on our field trip this weekend, so I’m looking forward to reporting back on Captain Science’s exciting education about MMORPG design!

You know how some weeks start out really strong and then peter out to nothing much? Yeah, that was this week.

Captain Science has done great with math this week, finishing chapter 29 of Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents completing the bridge to chapter 31 on the second try, and wrapping up the week with chapter 31 today. We’ll call this our high point.

History is our low point. Since I’m covering an area that gets the skimp in History: The Definitive Visual Guide, pre-Roman and Roman-era Britain, I’ve been relying on online resources, especially the wonderful articles on the BBC’s site. Supposedly, Captain Science was to read the article on Roman Britain and then write an essay addressing how life changed for the people of Britain under Roman rule. The actual essay was mostly a summary of how the Romans came to Britain, and a thin essay at that. Currently, Captain Science is trying to flesh it out a bit. We’ll see.

Language arts continues at a modest pace. Captain Science does two sentences from Practice Town daily. He completed the first half of his chapter from Caesar’s English I and will cover the second half today. Chapters alternate between short chapters covering word stems and large chapters covering vocabulary. We do the quiz over the previous chapter on one Monday, the stems the following Wednesday, then the first and second halves of the vocabulary chapter on the subsequent Mon/Wed. Captain Science really seems to be enjoying the Latin-based vocabulary and the format of the book, which is great! After finishing vocabulary, he’ll continue with his Paragraph Town reading and do the next section from Building Poems. If he writes anything interesting, I’ll be sure to share!

The co-op continues at a nice clip. The game class kids seem to be enjoying themselves, everyone loves the brain class, and my writing students are making headway into their stories. We covered “in medias res” this week and talked about making decisions as to where in the plot to start the story. We’ll be doing some experimenting with that in the following weeks.

Physics this week consisted of more Thames and Kosmos labs at Patchfire’s house. For once, Captain Science actually finished assembling something before Eclectic Girl, which is quite unusual. Usually he dawdles quite a bit and EG has to fuss at him to stay on track. Luckily, he seems to enjoy being bossed around by smart females, so he and EG make a good team in that respect. They built some sort of catapult this week and flung wooden balls all over the kitchen. I continue to be unimpressed by the complete lack of instructions in the kit, however. “Assemble as shown” doesn’t help very much when the pictures are small, there are no step-by-step instructions, and many of the small parts look so similar as to be impossible to distinguish between without closeup shots. Hmph.

Piano continues to go well, so we have that to focus on as a major positive. My aunt is having some surgery on March 10th, however, so we’ll have two weeks w/o piano lessons. This means I have to be diligent about making him work on the scales (which were just added) and doing some theory work, so he doesn’t lose his focus. Getting him to play songs is no work at all, though. He loves it!

That was our week. It’s not finished, but I sure feel pretty darn finished right about now.

We had another fantastic week at the McLernins Academy of Advanced Lernins (no, I don’t actually put that on my DOI or attendance reports, but I’m considering it for next year)!

Monday was only a half-day, because Captain Science and I had a special day planned. I wasn’t going to have him do any work at all, but the little darling woke up early, knocked out his run, math, and grammar before I ever got up! We closed shop early to go see Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, which Captain Science declared one of the best movies ever, even if it wasn’t very much like the book. We rounded out our awesome afternoon with corned beef and roasted potatoes, which is his favorite meal (other than chicken fingers and french fries), for a full day of Captain Science/Smrt Mama fun. It was the best President’s Day ever.

Tuesday is co-op day at the McLernins house. We were down two students (Ari and Eclectic Girl, both on family vacations), but the board game class was still boisterous and productive. The children voted on their game idea, which, somewhat ironically, is a food fight game set in a public school cafeteria! We only had one student who didn’t like that idea, but hopefully he’s having enough fun that he won’t mind working on his less-than-first choice.

My writing students are making great progress, too. Since EG wasn’t there and I didn’t want her to get too far behind, my three students (Cpt. Science included) read Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper.” We then discussed things like protagonists and antagonists, pacing, climax and resolution, and reliable vs unreliable narrators. Their assignment for next week was to rewrite their climactic scene from a different POV. Captain Science finished his rewrite last night.

Jumping into our subject by subject review:

It was what we’d call a FABULOUS week for math. Captain Science knocked out chapter 25 in Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents, then completed the bridge to chapter 26 in the first try! He also completed chapters 26-28 without making any mistakes. Woohoo!

Language arts was also good this week. We reviewed clauses and phrases one more time in Grammar Town, because I was still a little concerned about Captain Science being able to identify a gerund. He did several pages from Practice Town, a lesson from Caesar’s English I plus review of prior materials, and did a lesson on rhymes in Building Poems. He’s currently writing a neat final draft of his end rhymed, internal rhymed, and eye rhymed poems, which I’ll post later. Once he’s done, he’ll read the first section of Paragraph Town, wrapping up our LA work for the week.

With Patchfire on vacation (how dare she, right?), we were left to our own devices for science. She left me the materials for the brain class for co-op, so I took the students through that (messing up my own materials by coloring incorrectly, which made them laugh at me). Captain Science also did workshops I, II, and III and experiments I and II from his Thames and Kosmos physics lab, getting all caught up for the week we missed due to not having the kit yet.

Piano! I always forget to add piano. Captain Science is making huge strides. He’s an excellent sight reader, but also has a good ear for music. He’s advancing quickly into chords, playing duets with his teacher, and is slowly integrating scales. I’m so impressed by how naturally he’s taken to it, considering I was not that much of a natural on the piano. I’m so happy that he’s musically minded!

The Tank’s week was fairly uneventful: no class on Monday, happy and sunny days on Wednesday and Thursday. Have I mentioned that I can’t wait to start homeschooling him? I’m lining up my resources for next year!

Babypie has a cold. I have a cold. Officer Daddyman has a cold. That’s our big accomplishments for the week.

Captain Science had a great week. Thank goodness, because I was fixin’ to put him out in the yard in a box labeled “free kittens (large).”

He finally, finally passed the Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents bridge to chapter 20 (we won’t even talk about how many tries that took) and then zoomed through chapters 20-24. Even though chapter 24’s work was as long as a bridge and over new concepts, he finished it quickly and completely correct!

Caesar’s English I is also going swimmingly. After finishing the second chapter last week, Captain Science reviewed the materials and then took the cumulative quiz over the materials . 100% — surprising, as he took it in a noisy coffee shop while I was attending a baby-wearing meeting. He’s such a little peach sometimes that it makes those bad weeks much more bearable.

He has also officially completed Grammar Town, though I have to say, bless his heart, we’re having to go back and do review over a few concepts. He missed 10 of the 25 questions of the post-test, due mainly to zooming through without paying attention. He can identify all the relevant parts of speech, phrases, etc. in a sentence, write an example sentence using the required sentences parts, but totally bombed the multiple choice?   Yeah, I’m going to call that an effort issue, not a retention issue. It was hard to keep him focused through his work on Practice Town today, as it has started snowing to beat the band, a rare treat in Georgia. We went through a little review of direct object vs. indirect object vs. subject complement, then he broke down a few example sentences for me (all correct), before I booted him out into the snow, where he is currently leaving giant footprints all over the formerly pristine snowy driveway.

Our mini-co-op is going swimmingly. We added new students to Daddyman’s game class this week and two of the new students (some of my favorites from my writing class last semester) stayed to do Patchfire’s class on the brain and my writing class. We now have an age spread from 9-12 (maybe almost 13?) and an additional girl, which is nice for balance. They came up with their board game ideas, looked at slides of the brain online, and worked on the main conflict from their stories. The dynamic is just perfect now, as the oldest student is genuinely admired and respected by the younger kids, which lets him act as a leader and keep them on track. Love these kids, seriously. Such a wonderful group, every single one of them, from our morning gamers to our afternoon writers.

Science in general is moving in a fun direction. Captain Science’s Thames and Kosmos Physics Workshop came, so he and EG spent Thursday building various machines to test force and weight. Patchfire et al. have prior commitments on Tues/Thurs of next week, so I’ll be managing the brain class and having Cpt. Science catch up on a couple of experiments from the phsyics kit next week — something to do with dropping potatoes and making a sail car? Or maybe sailing a potato car?

The Tank surprised me this week with his ability to write his name, which isn’t exactly short or easy (and we’ve had some arguments over the inclusion of the letter “v” on a few occasions). He wrote it on 10 valentines for his classmates and teachers, with no help and only one or two gentle reminders that his name doesn’t start with “O.” He missed class on Wednesday due to a mild fever the night before (24 hour fever policy? — homeschool doesn’t have that), and when I walked him in, all the little boys in his completely-male (by lack of girl enrollment, not by sex-segregating design) class were sitting at their desks with giant globs of pink play-dough (made by yours truly) and hollered, “You’re here!” His teacher also gave him a huge hug and said, “I’m so glad you made it today!” Queue moderate guilt over not re-enrolling.

Babypie’s newest skill this week is incessant chattering. She talks almost constantly in nonsensical syllables that perfectly mimic the tone and form of our speech.

I stayed busy with both a La Leche League meeting and a baby-wearing social, plus the co-op and science at Patchfire’s. I’ve been under the weather and am dragging, so I’m amazed our week has been this productive. I just want to drink coffee and snuggle under a blanket all day, but that’s not a good way to get homeschooling accomplished, sadly.

It’s currently snowing all fluffy and Yankee-like out there, so I’m going to take some pictures and document this magnificent snowfall. I’m sure I’ve forgotten stuff from the week, but such is the nature of things.

The week started out pretty terribly, but slowly improved, peaking with today’s work.

Math this week was…well, kind of a wash. Captain Science, despite having shown mastery in the individual skills in the preceding chapters, couldn’t manage to synthesize those skills well enough to pass the bridge. He did tries 2-5 of the bridge to chapter 20 in Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents, then the first try again, because he missed two or more problems each time. Earlier in the week, it was because he was trying to solve the problems using his “better way” of doing math. Today’s problem just seemed to be that he remembered how he worked the problems last week, and was just replicating that work from memory, rather than working through it fresh. Impressive memory, kid, but I think you’re missing the point!

Grammar, luckily, is going pretty well. We did have the bizarre stories before his completed story, but otherwise, he’s zipping along through his MCT. Today, he kick the butt of a great big lesson from Caesar’s English I and we’ll quiz on it on Monday. I need to get the poetry lessons broken down, with examples, but I haven’t managed to find the time for that yet, so I don’t think we’ll be doing any poetry today.

Creative writing wasn’t the best ever, as Cpt. Science lost last week’s work and had to redo it, but I’m happy with his makeup work. He’ll be doing this week’s assignment today, in order to be ready for next week, when two more students join us! Woohoo!

Piano is going splendidly. Captain Science has a great ear for music, but is also very good at sight reading already. He has learned the terminology quickly and is learning many new songs. He’ll have a formal recital in December, but between now and then, he’ll be learning more piano, some keyboard, even some arranging/composing!

Science is awesome. The brain unit that Patchfire is teaching is just SO COOL! Captain Science is enjoying it tremendously and is eager to work on it. We also ordered our Thames and Kosmos physics kit for the next unit, which is good, because our lack of the kit meant reading instead of lab on Thursday. Bad Smrt Mama.

My patience is a little short with Captain Science at the moment, because he’s really been goofing off and spazzing out this week, but I think we managed to invoke an adequate course correction for his shenanigans. Here’s hoping.

The Tank had a great week, at least. He made a musical instrument from a piece of Tupperware, some beads, bells, and buttons, and foam stickers. I also whipped up a double batch of pink salt dough to send in to school. He loves school so much that I do feel slightly guilty about not re-enrolling him next year. Not guilty enough to re-enroll him, though.

The find of the week was the National League of Junior Cotillions, which offers a wide array of etiquette classes for girls and boys. Patchfire and I are seriously considering enrolling our eldest children in the 5th grade program next year! We are so juneyaleeg.

A banner week! This week was pretty much all success, very little arse-dragging or slacking or attitude.

Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents was gangbusters, chapters 16-19 and the first pass at the bridge. Granted, he got all loosey-goosey come bridge time, so he’ll have to do at least one more try, but every other day this week, he finished quickly and with little to no error. He seems to have finally found his pace with the decimals.

I was thrilled to implement the MCT curricula this week. Captain Science absolutely loves Grammar Town. It’s mainly reading, with very little written work, though there are several sections of memorization (pronouns, verb tenses, etc.). I’ve had Captain Science write the memorization stuff down and we have been doing little memory games when we’re at the table for a meal or riding in the care. I made up a poem for the subject and object pronouns, which Cpt. Science enjoyed. He’s already well into the book, covering pgs 3-55, which means he’s about at the halfway point. Good thing we have plenty of other language arts stuff to work on!

Captain Science also began Caesar’s English I. He did the introduction on Tuesday and the first lesson today. Again, little written work, a lot of reading, and then review. I told Captain Science that if he can pass the first review on the first attempt, we’ll start his actual Latin curriculum!

At Patchfire’s recommendation, we started the poetry along with grammar. No actual writing yet, just reading. Captain Science read the first section, “Building Poems.” He enjoys reading the poems, though I hope he’ll also enjoy writing them. I need to compile a list of example poems for each of the topics (assonance, alliteration, iambic pentameter, etc.) covered. Once I do, I’ll post that here.

Speaking of writing, we started our short story “class” with Captain Science and Eclectic Girl this week. The children first wrote down what they thought the components of a short story might be, then we discussed them and talked about why each guess was or wasn’t an element of a short story. We talked about length, conflict and resolution, antagonists and protagonists, then Cpt. Science and EG wrote a paragraph describing their antagonist and his/her main conflict in the story. EG’s story is about a girl from Chocolate World, trying to get to Candy World. Cpt. Science’s story is about a warrior from his imaginary world of Exon and the battle to…well, I’m not exactly clear on that, but he’s got the whole story to explain it to me!

History this week was the final bit of ancient Rome, the Pantheon Project. Next week, we’ll do a quick review and whatever final assessment I come up with. We’ve done crosswords, word puzzles, and Venn diagrams, so I need to come up with something else fun. Any suggestions?

We’re also back on the ball with Science on the same day (Tuesday) EG and Patchfire came over for writing, Patchfire taught a science unit on the brain. Cpt. Science and EG read, looked at CAP, PET, and MRI scans of the brain (which they Googled), and colored a scan of the brain. On Thursday, we went over for a continuation of the unit on water and heat.

Next week, Officer Daddyman starts his first board and card game design class. I think we have a few other families interested, so I think that will be a lot of fun. He’s great with kids that age, too, so I think he’ll also get a lot of enjoyment out of the class. If he hadn’t become a cop, he could easily have been a wonderful middle school teacher. He has the kind of patience for children ages 8-13 that I just don’t have. I’m better with the littles and the great-bigs. The in-between-bigs aren’t my best area.

The Tank also had a great week at school, though it was early release week, due to the public school schedule. Can I get a “and that’s another reason why we’re not re-enrolling him next year” from the audience? The high point of the week was Pajama Day, when Tank got to wear his big brother pajamas to class and bring a stuffed animal. He chose Captain Science’s old Build a Bear, named “Bye Bye Bear” that meows when you squeeze its paw (hey, Cpt. Science was only 2 when he made it, ok?).

Babypie is talking up a storm. I started making a list of the things she says (to me, at least) and I came up with around 20 words! At 10 months old! Another talker like her biggest brother, I guess. Amazing how much she and Captain Science are alike.

My only accomplishments for the week were ticking off some unschoolers and developing mastitis. I recovered from the unschooler thing right away, but the mastitis has been a slower go of it. Still feeling run down and glad it’s finally the weekend.

This week started out rough, but ended up productive.

Since winter break, Cpt. Science has been completely unwilling to do any work. Along with that, he’s been Bad Attitude Boy, smart mouthing and back talking and arguing. Things finally came to a head on Tuesday, when he pitched a shrieking, stomping tantrum at the park. Well, I don’t tolerate a tantrum from a nine year old, so we implemented what I like to call prison-style homeschooling: confinement to the house, most basic of subjects only (math, language arts, history), and lots of running if work isn’t completed or if there’s any back talk or rudeness. Captain Science ran an awful lot on Tuesday. He also missed out on science lab and wasn’t allowed to play with friends, visit Nana, or leave the house for anything but running.

Miraculously, he woke up on Wednesday, had a morning run, and was downright chipper. Not only did he finish his work in a timely manner, he did it with a glad heart, and the work was top notch! At the least sign of the return of the bad attitude, he was sent out to run four laps up and down the street. Each time, he came in with an even better attitude and work ethic. By today, he was zooming through his subjects with enthusiasm and determination, turning in top-notch work and using his best manners. He was rewarded with a short trip over to Nana’s house to play with his friends there, something he hasn’t been able to do during our week of prison-style homeschooling.

During three days of near-perfect homeschooling, Captain Science read about the fall of Rome and wrote a lovely essay about that, then made a great joke about part of Rome being attacked by birds, and becoming Turkey. He passed the bridge to chapter 15 in Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents in two tries, missing only two on the first try (most likely due to misreading his own handwriting in the middle of a problem) and only one on the second try (due to misreading “0″ as “6″ in the middle of a problem — time to work on handwriting again!). He read several chapters in Science: The Definitive Visual Guide, which we discussed. He did the last chapter in Vocabulary from Classical Roots that he will be doing, then passed the test on the previous four chapters. He also finished several sections in Writing Strands 3.

Next week, we toss Writing Strands, Vocabulary from Classical Roots, and Editor in Chief A1 in favor of the Michael Clay Thompson Town-level language arts curriculum. I’m so excited, and so is Captain Science.

Mostly, though, I’m excited that we’re finally back on track again!

Let’s talk about the weather or international disasters or politics. You know, something less painful.

Captain Science is…well, I’ll just call it “boundary testing.” I believe I mentioned that a little earlier this week. Of course, I made the huge mistake of commenting that he’d improved greatly by Wednesday, which of course means that by Wednesday afternoon, it had all gone to hell in a tightly-woven, decorative, but highly functional Longaberger hand basket*.

Sometimes, Captain Science is not the most forthright of children. He occasionally sneaks, cheats, and/or lies, especially if he’s trying to do something fun that requires polishing off a few chores or some work first. Along with being slow, slow, slow this week, he opted to do a little copying down the answers in Life of Fred and turning it in as his own work. Of course, because the answers to each section of Life of Fred are just right there, I can understand the temptation, but really, if you’re going to lie about having done the work, pick a problem where it’s not so obvious. Pal, I know you didn’t convert .875 to a fraction in your head that quickly.

Captain Science had been warned that lying would result in writing lines, so he got to start a page of lines that said, “I will not lie and I will not cheat.” That took him about fifteen times longer than it ought to have, pushing back even more work. Every task this week, with the exception of the first have of Wednesday and science on Thursday, has been like a long, slow tooth extraction. I’m pretty sure he’s accomplished a few chapters of Life of Fred, perhaps 11-14? He also managed to do a lesson of Editor in Chief and two Writing Strands sections. Before he goes to bed tonight, he’ll do a chapter of Vocabulary from Classical Roots. It’s not that the week has been educationally fruitless, it’s just been rather devoid of joy.

We’re trying some new things to get us back onto track, but it will take a couple of weeks to see how they pan out. Wish us luck and that week 21’s review is more positive than this week’s.

*The Nana collects these. She’s not really the collecting type, but she does love a basket, because “you can put things in baskets” and they are useful in the event of a disaster. The children all have Longaberger Easter baskets. I am not a Longaberger consultant or anything, but if you want to buy an expensive, but very nice, basket, Longaberger is the way to go.

This week, we started back to school after a two-week holiday break and we had our first (and possibly only) snow fall of the winter. We also implemented our new schedule, which of course required some boundary-testing. You can imagine how unproductive this week turned out to be.

Math was exactly what I thought it would be, review by way of doing all the tries for the bridge to chapter 11 in Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents. Captain Science kept getting hung up on the problems requiring multiplying numbers with decimals. With each try, however, he was able to do the problem easily on a second attempt, so I think part of the issue was the dawdling and distractability. We went through it one more time, together, and I think it all snapped back into place, because his only mistakes thereafter were “couldn’t pay attention” errors in arithmetic.

History was…well, he enjoyed his chapters on Roman technology and social status, at least. His essay on Roman technology was good, and I enjoyed his conclusion that, “despite not having electricity, the Romans were in some ways more advanced than we are.” His essay on the importance of Roman social status turned out to just be a list of the different social statuses with a brief description, however.

Because we haven’t gotten our new MCT grammar curriculum yet, Captain Science worked on Editor in Chief A1 a lot this week, doing three lessons of it. He didn’t make any mistakes in the lessons, but it took him forever and ever to finish them. Vocabulary from Classical Roots went much more easily and quickly. He really enjoys vocabulary and the parts of speech. He isn’t very keen on rewriting paragraphs. Fair enough.

This week’s science unit apparently had something to do with boiling water while Captain Science and Eclectic Girl took turns staring at it and muttering excitedly. It also involved a dish of isopropyl (which my browser’s spell check keeps insisting is spelled incorrectly, even though it’s not) alcohol and sticking one’s hands into bowls of water of various temperatures. I guess that means they were learning about heat?

Officer Daddyman subscribed us to the Classics for Kids podcast on iTunes and he and the boys listened to one this morning while I slept in a bit with a bad headache. That was the sum total of our electives this week, I’m sorry to say. Next week will be better, surely.

On a positive note, Patchfire and I did decide on a good use of our newly-emptied Tuesdays. I’m using the mornings to do art and she’ll come over in the afternoons to teach a second science class (on the brain) and for me to teach creative writing. It’s a micro co-op!

I guess the first week back to school after the break could have been worse, but I feel like every single accomplishment was extracted with the relative ease of pulling teeth from a reluctant tiger.

I can tell that Christmas is nearly upon us, because this week was almost a total wash. It started on the right foot, but ended on the lame and limping foot. I comfort myself with the knowledge that if Captain Science were still in public school, he’d have spent the week doing holiday-themed worksheet packets and having his class Christmas party, so any academics are still more than he’d have been getting there.

History was one of the subjects that started off so well. Monday’s topic was the lives of the emperors and how Rome went from republic to empire. Captain Science’s essay was the best so far. Wednesday’s topic, however, was on Roman innovations and inventions (technology and the like). Sadly, though this should be a topic Captain Science latched onto right way, he caught a case of the holiday half-asses and wrote the thinnest, most conjecture-filled essay in the history of essays. Ok, not quite that bad, but still pretty bad. I was going to have him rewrite it on Thursday, but instead decided to just call it a wash, as I was deathly ill.

Math also started out strong with chapters 7 and 8 of Life of Fred: Decimals and Percents, but then got a bit spotty with 9 and 10. Captain Science made lots of careless mistakes that required correcting (and a little suspected peeking at the answers). I think it’s good that the next lesson is the bridge to chapter 11, because it will provide a nice post-holiday review to let me know if we need to go back and cover certain chapters again or if we need to buy some supplemental materials.

No science this week at all, because of the above mentioned deathly illness.

Captain Science did some Editor in Chief and Writing Strands work. Nothing to write home about in terms of excitement, but a solid job done by Captain Science. He also did a few Logic Countdown exercises of his own choosing.

This will be our last weekly review until 2010! I can’t believe we’re really done with our first full semester of homeschooling. It’s passing so quickly and much more easily than anticipated.